Faits Divers 33

• Crazy after our years as students in France in the 80's and previous where phone use was extraordinarily expensive, now landline phones in France can call ANY OTHER LANDLINES IN THE WORLD for free, and they call cell phones in Europe for very cheap. Mind boggling. Nice for my cell phone use as I call museums, etc., tho :) Glad to have the apt. phone after all; I had been thinking I would never use it.
• Wow. This guy came into a store I was browsing and when he spoke I got goosebumps. Voice of chocolate and butter and maybe scotch. If I drank scotch. The fact that he was hot is completely beside the point, altho a nice addition. This kind of stuff never happens to me in the States.
• Badoit! Extraordinary fizzy water. You'll have to come try it. I can't describe it. But I'm so glad to have it again! yum!
• Ricqlès no longer exists tho, unfortunately. So sad - best idea ever - fizzy water, very slightly sweet, and PEPPERMINT. Sounds wacky but you'll have to believe me it was soooooooooo yummy.
• French guys still wear dress shoes and blazers with jeans (and their man purse :).
• Capris aren't completely démodés yet, thank goodness (since I brought three pair). Of course guys wear them here, too, which is interesting. The ones in jeans and dress shoes look better.
• I got scoped on today. By a non-lech that is. I never get scoped on at all in the U.S. One more reason Sam & Lucy & I need to move here.
• Yes! I've been taking the bus the last couple of days. I'm going to keep taking it whenever possible. It is SOOO great. The metro rocks, I have to say, but the bus helps you get a better idea of actual situation and relationships between places and arrondissements. It's a bit harder to navigate but whenever I have time to figure out a bus route I'm going to take it. Last night I went to Montparnasse and back to get my Tours tickets; I'm probably going back over there to shop at some point so I can take the bus then, too. Being at St. Michel (my neighborhood) makes it easy to take buses, too, since it's kind of a hub-y spot. The best was coming home that way the other night from Opéra. Christina is so funny; I was going to metro partway with them until we had to split up but she mentioned the bus and I said I'd been wanting to start riding them and she says, "Oh well then we're not going to let you metro - the perfect St. Michel bus stops right there and this is a good time to get your feet wet."
• I'm half watching/listening to a morning show kind of like "Today" and the music guy just talked about The Arcade Fire. :)
• I really am going to catch up on postcards again this weekend in Tours.
• Jerry Springer on Broadway... hmmmm.
• Cluny was wondrous yesterday. I have to stop calling it that tho, really it's the Musée national du moyen age (National Museum of the Middle Ages) nowadays. Still, wondrous and it remains one of my very favorite musées. We had to do a quasi-sneaky visit...
• Here's the thing. I was told during the spring that I couldn't do the museum reservations until I knew the students' Sorbonne schedules. Some of you know that consequently I was pretty much freaking out (altho luckily able to temper it with walks to Notre-Dame or a pause-café :) the first weeks here as we awaited the students' placement test info meeting... Then I happened to talk to Chris and he said Maria (our Sorbonne contact) would have been able to give me a ballpark idea fairly early in the spring if I had just known to ask. {Insert screamed "Putain de merde!!!!" here.} So at that point I did call or write Maria and she did in fact give me a ballpark idea so I could start calling museums but it was the day before our departure for Belgium. I spent wacky moments here and there while up north calling museums and the first three days of this week as well, to almost no avail. The great miracle is that we actually still got a group reservation for Versailles. But only two others panned out and both for our next-to-last day (beurck!). I decided we'd just have to go to various museums and sneak in in smaller groups, waiting a few minutes between each one, and have the students guide themselves with brochures, etc. Talked to Chris and Christina both and they agreed this is workable. Chris admitted that his first year doing the CU program he didn't realize group reservations were necessary and so did a few visites this way anyway. So there. In some ways I like this better; for the motivated students it's nice to let them experience things on their own - I always preferred this myself - but for the others and for those who haven't had as much French history before coming, it's better to at least start with something constructive like a guided tour. So instead I'm scheduling discussion times before or after some of the visites. It will still be good, but not the perfect idea I had in my head, of course ('cause I'm SUSAN!! when was the last time I was satisfied with something I did?!?!? ... hmmm. something to work on :)
• Dang I just got a text invite to have coffee, but it was a wrong number. Sometimes when Chris calls it doesn't show his name so I thought it might be him but no. So sad. I'd love to go have a coffee - anyone want to come join me?